Lindsay Seers, Nowhere Less Now (2012)

Amelia, Amy, Katie, Ecem

• Lindsay Seer’s works in film creating complex narratives they are mostly fictional but seemingly autobiographical.

Tin Tabernacle (A Flat-pack church made from corrugated iron.)Inside the church making it look smaller than it is.

“Knock its sides with a knuckle and you will hear the stark clank of metal.”

- Rachel Cooke (The Guardian)

Materials:

• Metal

• Wood

• Cardboard

• Scaffolding Poles

• Polystyrene

• Dexion

• HD Video Projection

• Headphones

Amelia

Great-great-uncle George on HMS Kingfisher 1890

Why did the artist make these choices?• Two screens created from a convex (sphere) and concave (hemisphere) mounted on a radio mast, this

communications mast was set within the body of an upturned ship• Projections were accompanied by a densely layered sound track on radio headphones and a novel by Ole

Hagen (given freely with the exhibition at Tin Tabernacle in Cambridge Avenue, London, 2012). They’re black and white because of the color-blindness that runs in the family, hence the room is dark

• Triadic relationship between the dates of the characters and the building is the starting point for an endless amount of 'coincidences' that Seers discovers as she travels through history searching for the truth.

• Her method is based on reenactment/evocations that are created to reveal qualitative relationships between things, these connections may be conceptual, historical or visual and emerge as she travels to relevant locations.

• The film has no preset script and emerges from thousands of fragments from multiple devices (the work can only be written in the making).

• The resultant installation has an excess of narrative streams and a collage of imagery as time (past, present, future) is compacted.

• Myriad of connections in the work spill out from the film into objects housed in the building, some planted and some not - and then into the form of the architecture itself which was already made into a ship of sorts in the 1950's. ecem

Focal Point

‘Nowhere Less Now’ “Tyranny of linear time” and piecing together another form of narrative that spirals back, time and again, to that single black-and white photo of her great-great-uncle.

“The sea has a memory,” “The dead live with us.”

What does it remind us of?

A pair of glasses or the portholes in a boat

Katie

What does the artist explore in their practise in general?

• Lindsay Seers uses film and other media to create a narrative in her work• She appears to deliberately leave questions raised in her work unanswered• Tom Morton (an editor of artist magazine ‘frieze’ and curator) has stated that to

“experience Seer’s work is to experience snapshots, rumours, doubtful information – fascinating fragments that refuse to add up to a neat, narratively satisfying whole”

• The environment in which her work is presented is also fundamental to Seer’s practise • She likes the contradiction of Fact vs. Fiction• Seers’s explores ideas of memory and personal history in her work also• Her work often has personal significance and yet the audience is still made to feel like

detached from the scene, an objective observer

Amy

What is the particular piece telling us/ trying to do?

• The film looks back on Seers's great great uncle, George Edwards, (who was a sea cadet) and his life on HMS dragon as well as looking forward to a future where photographs are banned.

• It also explores unanswered questions in seer’s family history such the drowning of her great great uncle George. His wife Georgina and wonders what happened to seer’s stepsister who went missing as a child.

Katie

What feelings or reactions does this work evoke?

The work leaves you curious it is to transport you into the world submersing you in this life where these questions remain unanswered. The film provides the contact where as the room takes you out to sea, to this upturned ship with a side chapel it is meant to overwhelm you with a sense of doubt and confusion

What influences of other artists can be seen in this work?

• The boat structure itself perhaps reminiscent of ‘Govan Stones’• These are Scottish sculptures originating around 900 to 1100 AD• Form of tribute to someone deceased • Joseph Cornell – use of found items to create a story similar to that of Seers work• Seers’s was influenced also by the work of other individuals in other professions including French philosopher

Henri Bergson (1859-1941)• He was interested in ideas on memory, consciousness, dreams , coincidences and unconscious filters• These are similar themes explored by Seers

Amy

What political, social, historical and religious influences are shown (if any)?

• Seers’s was born into naval family • This piece ‘Nowhere Less Now’ centres around an image she found of her great,

great uncle who was a sea cadet involved in the attempt to end the slave trade • Her great, great uncle was drowned at sea, the up turned boat appears to be a

reference to this • Seers merges the past political and social aspects of the catastrophic events

surrounding the slave trade and links this with her more peaceful exploration of Zanzibar today

• Seers also touches upon ideas of heritage and retracing our own personal history and whether that impacts us today

What we think of the work

References• http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/remember_me/• http://www.houseforanartlover.co.uk/arts/heritage-centre/heritage-blog/88-the-govan-stones-of-govan-old-

parish-church

• http://www.lindsayseers.info/exhibition_node/345# 7• Applin, J. (2012, 12). Lindsay seers. Artforum International., 51, 286-287. Retrieved from

http://search.proquest.com.idpproxy.reading.ac.uk/docview/1239094508?accountid= 13460• http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-reviews/9518481/Lindsay-Seers-Nowhere-Less-Now-Tin-Taberna

cle-Fantastic-voyage-into-the-unknown.html

• Picture - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hogsback_Stones_within_the_Nave.jpg• https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/nowhere-less-now/• http://search.proquest.com.idpproxy.reading.ac.uk/docview/1038922525?pq-origsite=summon• http://search.proquest.com.idpproxy.reading.ac.uk/docview/1239094508?pq-origsite=summon• http://www.lindsayseers.info/exhibition_node/345# 7